Yoot Tower Download ^NEW^
Danielle Dinunzio
The lead designer, Yoot Saito, who also worked on SimTower, produced this game as a sequel to SimTower, adding several new features while retaining the same general interface and style. The game's premise is largely unchanged from its predecessor; players must build a profitable and unique tower block complete with various amenities and living accommodations, while balancing the needs of the occupants.
Using the provided starting funds, players must begin to build a tower from scratch. As in SimTower, offices and food courts can be built to generate income, as well as condos that can be sold to families. There are plenty of new facilities that can be placed such as rented apartments, vending machines and public restrooms for food court patrons. There are also many changes to existing items that featured in the original game, i.e. a notable difference between the shop item in Yoot Tower and the one originally in SimTower is that it no longer functions as a rented space where the player has no control over what the shop sells; rather the player is provided with different types of shop from the start from which the income they make is part of the player's earnings. Another interesting addition is the ability for players to build two or more towers next to each other and join them with sky bridges. Other income sources also exist, such as placing billboards outside and renting them out as advertisement space.
There are numerous other improvements to the basic gameplay. You now have various seasons which affect number and types of residents throughout the year. To add more flavor than tower building in a nondescript location, Yoot Tower includes 3 different real-world locations (Hawaii, Tokyo & Kegon Falls), each with different conditions for success, different costs and sources of revenue, and unique attractions. Kegon Falls, for example, attracts floods of tourists during the summer but is eerily quiet during the winter (that's when you'll start worrying about whether your fixed costs are too high). As in SimTower, your tower will be rated every time you get a visit (always unannounced) from VIP's who will evaluate your facilities. If you make them happy, your tower gets bumped up a Star rating. The more stars you have, the more items you can build.
Product Information
Published by: SEGA
Web:
Street Price: $35
System Requirements
PowerMac with Mac OS 7.5 or greater
32 MB of RAM, 100 MB free hard disk space As we had purchased Sim Tower a month before, I anxiously awaited receiving Yoot Tower, the pulse pounding sequel. Ok, it's an upgrade, but I'm the Hollywood Guy, so what the heck. I received the software via express delivery, and it even included a nifty t-shirt, with their logo and slogan, "You build it. You deal with it." So, I put on the t-shirt, loaded up the software, and went to work. For those of you not familiar with Sim Tower, let me walk you through this game from the beginning. Yoot Tower offers three different scenarios: Hawaii, Kegon Falls, and Tokyo. All have their advantages and disadvantages. I chose Hawaii, because, well, who wouldn't wanna own a luxury tower in Hawaii? If you've played any of the SIM line of games, you know what's next. You get a basic layout, on which to build. In this case, the first thing you have to put down, is a lobby for your tower. Add an elevator, followed by a couple of floors, and you're set. Now, the fun really begins, as you choose what to put on each floor. I've put up a couple of condos, two coffee shops, and an ice cream parlor. I've also added a restroom facility. These guys thought of everything! This isn't a very good design, as the game seems to want you to put like developments on the same floor. I think I did pretty good to start out, as I'm merely trying to illustrate the game on a 14" screen.
Later, as it grows, you get more options. You arrange for security, to deal with the occasional bomb threat, housekeeping staff, and garbage detail. All these things cost money, so, you'll need to attract tenants, with office space, movie theatres, malls, and more shops. Also, a good four star restaurant wouldn't hurt. Make sure you put in a freight elevator. The new feature of this game that my wife really liked was the ability to build multiple towers, and you can even put a skyway between them! Well, the object of this game, is to build until you get to put the specialty item on top of your tower, while keeping down your tenant's stress levels. For Hawaii, it's a Cathedral. And even then, you're not done. The "finished product," looks like this: However, this still isn't a four star building. Some problems that I noticed, the maintenance fee seems a bit high. Just as you're about to earn enough money to buy something, the maintenance fee kicks in, and you have to start saving all over again. This gets frustrating after awhile, but I think this happened because I built too fast. You can earn extra income buy selling billboard space. Also, keep a constant eye on the feature playing in your movie theatre. They don't change automatically, and the moviegoers stop showing up after about a month. So, you've got a money pit on your hands. All of the above aside, I liked Yoot Tower. I mean, where else can you be a building owner, hotel manager, and movie theatre owner all in one? Copyright 1999 Mike Shields, mshi...@atpm.com. Reviewing in ATPM is open to anyone. If you're interested, write to us at rev...@atpm.com. Reader Comments (107)
These two options increase and decrease your tower's ranking (number of stars). Grading down also appears to show the Grade Up message box instead of the Grade Down message box. The Plug-In and Item fields are always empty, but upgrade/downgrade options apply correctly.
Anyone who played the original SimTower knows that the focus of gameplay was the building of the tower itself with little interactive bonding of the tenants, stores and structure. In Yoot Tower, the sequel, the emphasis is on the synergy between all the factors and factions contained within the game. You won't be constructing your dream building in a cold and impersonal vacuum but rather with an eye to developing a game story through the residents themselves.
The scope of Yoot Tower transcends that of the original in several important areas. The "living" tower you create will feed off the tenants by upgrading the number and quality of stores, facilities and services. In this way, your structure gains recognition and builds to a star rating system much like the world's greatest hotels, resorts and shopping districts do in the late 1990s.
As the owner and Chief Executive Officer, your objectives and goals are clearly defined. First, you must provide for the needs of both commercial and residential tenants. To this end you are invited into the actual lives of your tenants and must work to ensure profitability on an individual basis. The population is rife for explosion and can number in the tens of thousands if your tower is a success. Secondly, you'll need to entice and invite residents and businesses to reside in your building through any number of means such as promotions, advertising, quality commitments and more.
Yoot Tower expands gameplay over the original by allowing construction in three very diverse locations: Tokyo, Waikiki and the natural splendor of Kegon Falls with its changing seasons and exotic locale. Control issues, internal and external events, crises, critical management and juggling exigencies co-mingle with equal impact as you try to build your tower to the culminating "final item" that triggers a small event, hopefully leading to designation as The Great Tower.
Yoot Tower is a much-improved sequel to Maxis' tower-building classic SimTower. Similar to the first game, Yoot Tower was much more popular on the Mac than it was on the PC, probably due to the fact that both games were coded on a Mac and released for that platform first. Your goal is still the same as SimTower: build a high-rise that offers your residents a "stress-free" environment. A happy Sim resident gets enough business to make a profit, has an easy route to get to work and not too many people clogging the hallways and elevators. Lots of parking and great shops and restaurants couldn't hurt either.
The sequel to Sim Tower, Yoot Tower is a building simulator that lets you build towers in such exotic locales as Kegon Falls (underground tourist resort), Waikiki (paradise destination) and Tokyo (the complete arcology).
The player starts on a empty plot of land and must develop it into a successful and profitable venture by inserting rooms of different kinds (from shops to condominiums) and connecting them to transport systems, all according to their requirements. When a player fulfills a certain condition (such as the number of tenants), a VIP visits the building, and if his impression is favourable, the rating goes up, unlocking more rooms and facilities to expand the tower. The goal is to reach the ultimate level, and place an attraction (such as a chapel or a baseball field) on the top floor.
There are several rooms to expand your tower, usually starting with stores and restaurants plus hotel rooms (which provide daily income), expanding to offices, condominiums and apartments and other tenancy rooms. However, all these rooms need extra support in the form of facilities such as restrooms, vigilance rooms, as well as convention centers to attract more visitors or simply please your tenants. They must be always happy, or you risk seeing them leave if they aren't happy with the time it takes to move between locations or if there's too much noise.
One of the key aspects in the game is balancing the transport system - elevators, stairs and escalators. There are thee kinds of elevators: Simple, Express or Service. Simple elevators provide floor-to-floor operation (although you can choose not to stop at a particular floor), Express work in 15 floor intervals and Service are used only by stores and general tower staff (security and cleaning). More than one elevator can be added to a shaft, but each shaft has a limit on the floors it can cover. Stairs and escalators do the same function: short travel between floors, but while escalators are used for commercial areas, stairs are used for residential and office blocks.
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